Optical properties of strip-loaded polydiacetylene waveguides

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Abstract
Strip-loading is a convenient and effective method to design and fabricate channel waveguides in multilayer active polymer structures. Several micron wide strip-loaded poly(4-BCMU) waveguides are observed to be single mode at 1.06 im and 1.32 rim. Based on the optical nonlinearity for poly(4-BCMU) measured by THG at 1.32 pm, an intensity of 650 MW/cm2 is required to satisfy the optical phase shift material figure of merit, 4ir, for a directional coupler with 1 cm interaction length. To estimate the optical power for directional coupler operation, we initially assume no index saturation effects, negligible one or two photon absorption, waveguide propagation losses less than 1 dB/cm, and unity coupling efficiency. 40 W is the lowest estimated peak pulse power of operation for a device with 6 .tm2 area waveguides. Actual coupling efficiencies of light incident on our 6 pj2 ea waveguides are between 30 % and 40 %. The propagation losses for our sixip-Ioaded waveguides are between 4 dB/cm (i'M) and 9dB/cm (TE). The guided wave intensities are at least ten fold lower than the input intensities. Incident peak pulse powers of at least several hundred watts will be required for 1 cm long (lirectional coupler device operation. Initial interferometry results suggest that average power dependent thermal phase shifts dominate peak power dependent electronic phase shifts at duty cycles approaching unity. Polymer superlattices are considered as advanced nonlinear optical materials.

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